After three months of testing, the activists said, Jihyu received an operating permit (
Protesters have criticized Jihyu Waste Handling for not having anywhere to dump the fly ash (飛灰) and bottom ash (灰渣) collected from the incinerator, saying that the company wanted to dump such waste on a landfill site behind the plant.
However, representatives from Jihyu have told residents that the waste would not cause any environmental problems because it has been treated properly in advance.
Activists said that they worried about water pollution caused by the temporary disposal site, which was only 300m away from the Laonung River (荖濃溪), one of the main sources of drinking water for residents in the Kaohsiung metropolitan area.
Having encountered opposition, Jihyu then transported the waste to another landfill site in a neighboring township, but some remains stored at the plant.
Inside the plant
Stepping into the site of the Meinung Incinerator, piles of bags filled with fly ash and bottom ash can be seen lying around. Some of them are not completely sealed.
"It's extremely dangerous to store incinerator residue like this," said George Cheng (鄭益明), an anti-incinerator activist from the Taiwan Watch Institute (看守台灣研究中心), who visited the plant with the Taipei Times last week.
Cheng said that fine components of fly ash, containing hazardous chemicals such as dioxins, could easily enter the human body through the respiratory system and would accumulate over a long period of time.
Incinerator workers told the Taipei Times that the waste had been stored like that for more than a fortnight.
"My boss told me that waste storage is not a problem," said Mr. Cheng, a worker who would only give his surname.
Workers at the noxious site do not wear any kind of protective equipment aside from masks filled with carbon. Cheng said that he was not particularly worried over claims from activists that the site was a health hazard.
"We workers undergo health checks every six months," said Cheng.
A typical case
"We also worry about the health risk to workers, who are mostly very badly trained," Sung Yung-sung (宋永松), the MPA's head, told the Taipei Times.
The waste incinerator in Meinung is one of more than 100 small-scale incinerators in Taiwan.
There are no emissions regulations for incinerators in Taiwan. The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) promised that regulations for small-scale incinerators would be established by the end of this year, but until that happens Meinung residents living near the incinerator have no choice but to suffer from from the pollution caused by the incinerator.
Anti-incinerator activists in Meinung told the Taipei Times that the setback on Tuesday would not stop opposition to the plant, because more and more residents had realized that the facility had led to skin diseases and persistent coughs for many living in the township.
Activists said that they would keep on urging Jihyu to halt operation of the plant immediately and call off plans to built a landfill behind the plant.
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